Screwtape Letters Quotes

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them. ~ C.S. Lewis

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ~ C.S. Lewis

Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. ~ C.S. Lewis

The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. ~ C.S. Lewis

As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same...And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately. This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up...if you suppress it entirely...we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient's reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold...In this state your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike, his religious duties...He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. ~ C.S. Lewis

Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. ~ C.S. Lewis

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. ~ C.S. Lewis

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have
produced in the human heart - an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it,
therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very
world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual ear; they change from
a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before. ~ The Screwtape Letters, C.S.Lewis

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. ~ C.S. Lewis

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. ~ C.S. Lewis

If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit. ~ C.S. Lewis

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth. ~ C.S. Lewis

For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. ~ C.S. Lewis

And now for your blunders. On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. ~ C.S. Lewis

As long as he doesn't convert it into action, it does not matter how much a man thinks about his repentance. ~ C.S. Lewis

Once he accepts the distraction as his present problem and lays that before the Enemy and makes it the main theme of his prayers and his endeavors, then, so far from doing good, you have done harm. Anything, even a sin, which has the total effect of moving him close up to the Enemy, makes against us in the long run. ~ C.S. Lewis

The man can neither man, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels. ~ C.S. Lewis

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. ~ C.S. Lewis

The start date and the end date are always the important bits on the gravestones, written in big letters. The dash in between is always so small you can barely see it. Surely the dash should be big and bright and amazing, or not, depending on how you had lived. ~ Brooke Davis

Men who write love letters don't live in this century. ~ Rita Rudner

flags would be their final memory of loved ones. "Did Glen have any news?" Carolyn asked. Though the censors would not let them mention anything in their letters, men at the front sometimes heard about planned ~ Amanda Harte

My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety. ~ Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

To acknowledge the receipt of letters is always proper, to remove doubts of their miscarriage. ~ George Washington

Impossible is only two letters away from being Possible. ~ Natasha Tsakos

What Jessica said - hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them - was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby."
All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both - just come with me Jess, please ... I need you ... "
She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons. ~ Thomas Pynchon

You know why I am here? asked the headmaster.
Swaminathan searched for an answer: the headmaster might be there to receive letters from boy's parents; he might be there to flay Ebenzars alive; he might be there to deliver six cuts with his cane every Monday at twelve o'clock. And above all why this question? ~ R.K. Narayan

The sneaky heftiness of the book being the aggregate cumulative effect of hundreds of thousands of individually insubstantial little markings, letters and numbers, commas and periods and colons and dashes, each symbol pressed upon the page by the printing machine with a slightly greater-than-expected force and darkness and permanence. ~ Charles Yu

A huge dog, tied by a chain, was painted on the wall and over it was written in capital letters 'Beware of the dog.' ~ Petronius

Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story. ~ Yann Martel

I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures. ~ John Keats

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love ... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

As Sharon types the letters, I stand hands in pockets looking through the gold lettering of our window. I think of Sharon and American Motors. It closed yesterday at 30 ¼. ~ Walker Percy

Ah, you're the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then? ~ Prince Philip

It must be nice to have someone to write to. I've never had the luxury of love letters," Maxon said, a sad smile on his face. "Has she kept her word?"
Aspen was moving pillows from the other bed to prop under my head, avoiding eye contact with either Maxon or myself.
"Writing is difficult," he said. "But I do know she's with me, no matter what. I don't doubt it. ~ Kiera Cass

But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant's grip - one's faculties rise in revolt - and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle. ~ Charlotte Bronte

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things. ~ Umberto Eco

I am sorry for people who can't write letters. But I suspect also that you and I ... love to write them because it's kind of like working without really doing it. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women's self development is self-sacrifice. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Age, like numbers on a scale and letters on a report card, tells us very little of who we are. You decide every year exactly how young and how old you want to be. ~ Shauna Niequist

Maybe you saw her first? Caught a glimpse between the lines, between the letters, like a ghost in the mirror, a ghost in the wings? ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

A good face is the best letter of recommendation. ~ Elizabeth I

Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone. ~ Lenny Bruce

It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest. ~ Harriet Martineau

You learned right away that applause sounds like love. ~ Ava Dellaira

The more Nos I open myself up to hearing, the closer I am getting to my super successful life. ~ Malti Bhojwani

Has she received any letters from Lockton?'
The question hit me like a bucket of cold water. 'You asking me to spy again?'
'Listen,' he started, 'Our freedom-'
I did not let him continue. 'You are blind. They don't want us free. They just want liberty for themselves. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

…I am glad the rain is coming down hard. It's the way I feel inside. ~ Sylvia Plath

Why travel? To be changed, and to be changed again and again. ~ Carew Papritz

I can take a lot of pats on the back. I love it when I get admiring letters from people. And, of course, I'd love it if the critics would notice me, too. ~ Norman Rockwell

But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good. ~ Sylvia Plath

He thought again of the watch in the window. It had twelve black numbers on its moon face and there was magic to that. For these were numbers that were not really numbers at all but letters like in words. He shivered at the possibilities of such untold magic. ~ Davis Grubb

It's Violent.
You imagine it deafening, red, boiling-hot. It's like a comic book: the bright colors, the crude outlines, the words in capital letters: BANG!SMASH!CRUNCH! You think "smithereens."
You crave the explosion. ~ Joan Wickersham

I get up to 400 letters a week, so I have a full-time PA, but I try to answer everything. People don't seem to realise that if they send something living in the post it's going to die on the way. Especially when you wrap it in a polythene bag. ~ Alan Titchmarsh

Nigel gave the lamp a cautious buff and small smoking red letters appeared in the air. "Hi," Nigel read aloud, "Do not put down the lamp because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity." ~ Terry Pratchett

Sometimes I think it is ... frustration with life as it is lived day to day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter. ~ Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

My appearance on 'Public School' garnered a smattering of fan mail from girls, which was good, and letters from mothers saying I was the sort of boy they'd like their daughters to go out with - which was not quite as good. ~ James Lovegrove

99% of natural poets discovered their talents through love letters. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

We have to play it longer because there are no numbers or letters. ~ Eugene Ormandy